Abstract

This 9000 word article examines the political impact of William Cobbett's return to England in 1819. Cobbett had only arrived back in Britain three months prior to the Cato Street affair, in November 1819. He had spent the preceding two years in America, where he had fled in 1817 to avoid arrest in Britain. As Raymond Williams points out, Cobbett had left Britain when Habeas Corpus was again suspended, fearing arrest after refusing ‘a government bribe to stop writing’. This article examines a period when Cobbett stood for parliament, was imprisoned for bankruptcy, was suspected of being both a potential revolutionary and of being a government spy, helped to found The Lancet Journal, and became speech-writer to Queen Caroline.